No reason. Just to bank profit. Then go in again, because the long term direction isn’t going to change.
Till yesterday, but yes some trades just take an age to get moving - unless you focus on timely entries.
How do you cope with trading bigger amounts? I mean in terms of psychology, do you feel confident no matter what trade size you are in? I have noticed you trade some clients accounts - this is much bigger than a personal one. Is it all down to your fixed rules so you know how far (in terms of profits) you are willing to go or you are comfortable to keep adding as your account grow?
Thanks
I apply the same rules to any size account I trade. The only things that change are position sizes and risk per trade.
I might risk 10% per trade on my £10K account, my clients might have a £200K account, but it doesn’t mean they want to risk 10% per trade, after all, its their money.
According to what they want to risk per trade, I work out the best position size for that particular trade, so I can still have a wide SL - after all its all about staying in the trade.
I’ve never known anyone to accumulate profits in their account, especially when the account is £100K and above. Profits are usually withdrawn every week.
2 Likes
i got same email from icmarkets as u. beeing in seychelles, my only concern is money from the account… should i withdraw now, wait, migrate… dunno what to do really…i fully trust icmarkets AU, never had an issue whatsoever with them… but now transfering offshore…
This says it all.
Only keep what you can afford to lose. If they decided to spike your account and blow it - there’s nobody that is going to listen, its gone.
I doubt they would do that - the infrastructure and trading platform will remain the exact same as it is now.
All that is changing is the paperwork to say the offshore company will handle clients from abroad.
The company will still operate from Australia - again its just more paperwork to say they’ve got an office in the Seychelles.
In reality nothing is going to change in terms of trading - but if it does, nobody cares.
For now, I’m migrating over to Seychelles.
@The_Baller, exactly what u said, i ll leave just a portion into the account and i ll migrate, then after a while i ll test the withdraw process see if i can continue using icmarkets seychelles… as for the platform yeah… i don t care much as long as they can fill the orders in due time, and don t spike the spread like crazy during so called vollatility times…will see. the hole thing for me is account(money) concern, as most nowdays have tight spreads and a decent lag, execution with minor issues… but there s no point in knowing how to trade if u can t bail the money out of there lol, dunno if i made myself clear.
anyways, thanks for the reply, and yeah, for how they ve been so far it s worth giving them a shot, might be just like u said, paperwork and legislation boundaries etc
There is an African proverb that goes like this:
“When two elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled."
So I come in peace and apologize for losing it on this thread (albeit that I do believe that my reaction at the time was warranted). I think it would be shame to let personal differences between two good traders result in not being able to share ideas that may be of assistance to both them and others that may be struggling.
To this end then I’d like to share something that I’ve now spent some time finessing and I believe that has relevance to the methodology being used on this thread. I do not, however, profess to understand exactly what is being done here unfortunately. But then identifying support and resistance has not exactly been my forte.
However.
I’ve been working on and finessing something called Risk Based Position Sizing. And it seems to me that it would have relevance here.
From the little bit that I do understand about what’s being done here: essentially trades are being entered based on certain entry criteria (which as I say I don’t really understand) but unlike most trading systems, where it would be required that you place stops at very obvious places and which inevitably will result in your being stopped out or stop hunted more often than not, the trades are given ample room to run until they turn to profit. And it would seem that profits are taken on a discretionary basis which is absolutely fine i.e. there is no need to squeeze every last bit of profit out of a trade and at the end of the day it’s the money that’s banked that counts however much that may be.
The obvious problem to me though is the question of position sizing. And this has been an issue with my core trading system as well. So to this end I present Risk Based Position Sizing. The calculation I have standardized on is as follows:
Lot Size = ( 5% of Total Equity ) / 5 * ( 10-Day Average True Range ).
This calculation will indicate to you the maximum size position that you could be taking with a system such as this. It is dynamic as the 10-Day ATR will obviously fluctuate and therefore lot size should be calculated immediately prior to entering the trade. In addition: it is totally independent of the instrument or FOREX pair being traded. In other words: it will normalize the position size for any instrument or FOREX pair being traded whether it be a major FOREX pair or an exotic. Essentially: it normalizes volatility across instruments or pairs thus eliminating wild swings on some instruments or pairs that may not occur on others.
You may place hard stops if that suits. I do not i.e. my soft stops are mental stops.
From what I gather the question of position sizes and stops has been discussed here before but I saw nothing really definitive. But again from what I gather: it is purported (and which I totally agree with) that it’s better to trade with far wider stops and at the expense of position size rather than to trade with tight stops and with larger position sizes only to get stopped out time and time again for no good reason in the case of the latter. Those stop outs add up very quickly (even at 1% per trade). And possibly even more important: they affect trader psychology. It is very difficult for any trader to continue trading once they’ve been stopped out two or three times in a row. Inevitably they will simply give up and move on to try and find the next Holy Grail. But almost always: the very next trade would have gone well in their favor had they not been prematurely stopped out. But by that time they’re now getting stopped out frequently with the next Holy Grail. And so on and so forth.
So an example.
Let’s assume that you are going to enter a new trade based on the methodology defined by @The_Baller (whatever that may be i.e. as noted twice already I’m not entirely sure that I understand the methodology). So let’s just assume for the purposes of this example that the methodology would have you go long AUDUSD at the current closing price of 0.6928. So here’s the low down:
Assumptions made:
Capital: $55 000 USD
Risk: 5% per trade.
Risk amount: $2 750 USD.
ATR(10): 0.0044
Opening price: 0.6928.
Based on the above:
Lot size: 12.5.
Stop: 0.6708.
Note: the figures above may differ slightly at your broker and may also be rounded to a small degree so not exact but should differ only by a very few pips and price points.
Take a look now at a Daily chart of AUDUSD and see just how far the stop is away from price. Bear in mind that even if such stop is reached: you’re only losing 5%. If at some point you decided to close the trade out, for whatever reason, possibly based on following the methodology detailed on this thread, then the chances are that such loss will be a mere fraction of your account. And you live to fight another day. On the other hand: if or when the trade moves into profit then take profit on a discretionary basis or as dictated by the methodology detailed here. Note also that is not a particularly small lot size either and is a fair $ per point or pip movement.
I believe this method of position sizing and risk management to actually be independent of the trading system or methodology being implemented to be honest particularly if the use of stops does not form part of the trading system or methodology or if the stops are of a more discretionary nature which appears to be the case here.
There is, however, just one small problem with this. Most will find it impossible to implement any of the above (sorry to disappoint if you’ve read this far). The reason: under capitalization. On a small account it would be impossible to implement the above. And this of course is another entire topic of discussion i.e. should one be trading with limited capital to begin with (the answer is a resounding “no” in my opinion of course).
The above being said one could take a more aggressive approach e.g. risk on 2% per trade and use only a factor of 3 times the ATR value. The calculation would therefore be as follows:
Lot Size = ( 2% of Total Equity ) / 3 * ( 10-Day Average True Range ).
Obviously this would move stops closer and result in your being able to trade with a bigger lot size. This I’m afraid is personal choice. I favor the more conservative approach myself but always bear in mind that I don’t trade FOREX pairs so a more aggressive approach may be acceptable for FOREX traders.
So there it is. Risk Based Position Sizing.
For what it’s worth and as I’ve noted on my thread: it may very well be “the keys to the kingdom” (for just about any trading system or methodology). And certainly possible that’s it’s my best contribution thus far since starting out in 2005.
2 Likes
i also have a live account with core liquidity markets, also from australia, same regulations etc, haven t received an email there…and from what i know they are pretty reliable 2
Was all over the place trying to find a reliable broker as some clients just won’t want to risk their cash in the Seychelles, then I receive this email.
yeah, got same, pretty happy with that must admit, never had an issue with them in years, and to change broker all of a sudden that u don t fully trust sux
Its a good start - I just can’t login to any of my accounts right now, which is the next step.
This IC markets australia debate still ongoing?
The reason ic wants to close down their au accounts for foreigners is that once the AU government used to guarantee to a degree of 50.000 for the account in case of bancruptcy of bank or broker. This guarantee has been narrowed down to only australian citizen/residents.
So in the case of a bancruptcy a AU resident is secured with 50k by gov. While a person having same account and same obligations/costs/worries with the exact same bank and broker -but- is not a AU resident, will get absolitely nothing in case of default.
In this case, the seychelles is the more secure place for your money than Australia 
Time to dust off the old UK no 1 
That was a bummer for me as well.
I got most of that sorted and then went to live chat - and they couldn’t move me over for some reason.
They said all available subsidiarys would be displayed when you first sign up and choose your country.
When I choose “UK” there were no other options for me to select.
I thought it was sorted - I’m not sure if they’ve pulled a fast one and just told everyone they won’t be migrating their accounts over to somewhere else.
The URL to login to cTrader used to be https://ct.icmarkets.com and now its changed to https://ct-sc.icmarkets.com on their documentation.
Neither work.
I agree with what you’ve said tho - Seychelles isn’t a bad call. I just need some time to go over my options.
You must be carefull to changes in your users agreenment if they let your account stay in AU. They can do that only if you accept the changes of that your money is no longer backed by the AU government. So they need you to agree to some sort of document but i doubt they will point this fact out very clearly. So whatever they send you, read it carefully.
That’s really weird they have been unable to help you.
I have had an account with them already (just haven’t used it over year till now) and this email sorted it out all.
Did you choose GM in the little drop-down menu under the registration? It is quite tricky to register under offshore subsidiary through them though. You can also notice that there isn’t such a word mentioned that UK customers can use up to 1:500 leverage. It is probably all legal but they can’t be prompting users to move it over.
You legend.
I didn’t even see that. I see it now.
Hopefully this will sort the leverage issue out.
1 Like
So true bro… so true…